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Friday, May 25, 2012

Guest Blogger M. Pax: Misadventures of a City Gal in the Wilderness

I'm thrilled to be hosting my friend M. Pax today as part of her blog tour to promote her new book The Backworlds. If you haven't already checked out the Backworlds, don't wait any longer! It's a wonderful book and Mary is a great writer. Thank you for being here, Mary!

Misadventures of a City Gal in the Wilderness

By origin, I’m an East Coast city gal. I grew up in Western
New York near the border of Canada. I lived many years in New York City and
Washington, DC.

Then I met the Husband Unit whose origins are in Colorado.
We moved out west to Oregon. A decision I don’t ever regret. Portland is still
a city, but once you leave the urban boundaries … well, I was in shock the
first couple of years.

Places where there aren’t any people? Roads without pavement
and cars? Trees taller than a skyscraper? Sea lions, otters, bald eagles, elk,
and antelope. Seriously? I thought antelope lived in Africa. Now that Home on the Range song makes sense.

We moved to Central Oregon four years ago. The wilderness
starts two blocks to the left. Honest. I’m talking about vast stretches of sage
and brush, and few signs of civilization.

I volunteer at an observatory every summer, which is thirty
miles east of town. Really out in nowhereville. A place where there are no
other cars on the road. Where you can see no other people. There are no street
lights. Places that are so quiet (because there are no other people), you can
hear the Earth hum.

One night up at the observatory, we had a troop of boy scouts.
Two of the boys forgot their flashlight, so I volunteered to walk them back to
their tent. After all, it was only across the road. STUPID! City people should
never walk around in the wilderness and especially not in the dark. I couldn’t
find my way back … yeah, just across the road. The trees blocked the lights
from the observatory, and I quickly got turned around. I knocked on a camper’s
tent and asked for help. They kindly walked me to the outhouse. From there I
could find the observatory.

Last year (my 4th summer at the observatory), we were
hanging out in the residence as usual. It was a cloudy night, so we never set
up. We had no visitors. No chance of seeing a star. I’ve walked between the
manager’s house and the parking lot hundreds of times and it’s maybe 30 yards
at the most.

Because of the cloud cover, there was no moonlight, no
starlight. You have no idea just how dark that is. My flashlight was in the car
with the rest of my gear. Doing me no good. I thought I was walking straight.
Yeah, straight into a tree. Ow. Then I found myself in bramble. In desperation,
I beeped my car. It was amazing to me how far off course I was in just a few
steps. Dark like that is really disorienting.

Have you had any wilderness misadventures?

The BackworldsAfter the war with Earth, bioengineered
humans scatter across the Backworlds. Competition is fierce and pickings are
scant. Scant enough that Craze’s father decides to hoard his fortune by
destroying his son. Cut off from family and friends, with little money, and
even less knowledge of the worlds beyond his own, Craze heads into an uncertain
future. Boarding the transport to Elstwhere, he vows to make his father regret
this day.

Free on Smashwords & Feedbooks. Will be free on Amazon
in a few weeks.

Sign up for M. Pax’s newsletter to be notified the
moment The Backworlds goes FREE on Amazon, and when it becomes available from
other retailers.

About the author:

M. Pax’s inspiration comes from the wilds of Oregon,
especially the high desert where she shares her home with two cats and a
husband unit. Creative sparks also come from Pine Mountain Observatory where
she spend her summers working as a star guide. She writes mostly science
fiction and fantasy, but confesses to an obsession with Jane Austen. She blogs
at her website, www.mpaxauthor.com and
at Wistful Nebuae. You’ll find
links there to connect on Twitter, Goodread, FB and other sites.

LOL - love your stories of getting lost in the dark. I've done that . . .in a campground. I live down a gravel driveway, but there is enough light in the sky from other places, it never gets truly dark.But I have experienced it once or twice while camping in Canada on a 70 mile trek around Bowron Lake Provincial Park - got lost between the outhouse and the campsite . . . not fun.

Mary, this is so funny and relatable! My husband is from NYC and we moved to OR from there. Our first summer we went camping. It took him an hour and a half and LOTS of unprintable words to set up our tent :)

I've lived in the west for most of my adult life. When we traveled to the East Coast on a year-long road trip, we actually considered settling down in NH. Then we looped back around to the west again and knew this was the place we loved most. It's as you said, Mary, the open-ness and being away from people is incredible. And the mountains are so much bigger.

Hi Julie .. great to see Mary here - good luck with your book - sounds very interesting. I love your description of life in the country - thankfully the stars seemed to be shining when I've been out in the bush.

Hi M Pax, I loved your post. Just enough self deprecating humour lol. As you can probably tell from the way I spell humour, that I'm not from the US, but my father worked for a company based in Beaverton, Oregon and he took many trips to "The wilderness" when he visited. Yes it could get very dark!!!

I went from living in the urban jungle of San Francisco to living on a mountain in Colorado. The transition was not easy, especially when I encountered my first wolf spider.Now I'm back in city living (actually suburban living) and I miss the quiet and the darkness that brings brilliant stars. I do not miss traveling 50 miles to get groceries.

I don't come from a massively over populated place, but the wilderness you live in, is an extreme by anyones standards, but also beautiful. I especially thought that when you said you could hear the Earth hum. Stunning.

The only time I have ever felt anything similar to loss of sense like that was one year, probably about 22 years ago, when we had a fog that practically ate you up and it came down while I was at work. I nearly drove onto a motorway I definitely didn't want to be on!

I grew up in Michigan in an area that was between development and cornfields. So there was plenty of scary stuff. In the back of my mind I thought some of these farming families sacrificed people to their corn gods. Kinda like the story The Lottery.

Baby Moo's Great Escape

About Me

Author of the Polar Night series and The Ghosts of Aquinnah. My first children's book, Baby Moo's Great Escape, is now available! When not writing fiction, I love to write about animals and animal-related issues.